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Messages - Eldritch_Lord

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1
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: "Tier 3" System Revisions
« on: September 14, 2021, 02:12:34 PM »
Regarding the armor styles, the revised versions look better, but they're still fairly hesitant to hand out anything worthwhile.

Since the trend you're going with here is "When in doubt, do what AD&D did," I'd say the bare minimum the base specialization should do is to remove ACP, Max Dex, and speed penalties entirely so fighters can do cartwheels in full plate, and then go up from there.  AC bonuses and DR are always nice, but +1 and 2/-- are kinda lackluster; even if you specialize in heavy armor at 1st level before you can even afford any heavy armor, you're getting DR 2/-- at 5th level when anything less than DR 5 ends up being a rounding error.

Personally, even if you added every single one of those benefits to the first level of every martial class, I don't think that'd really increase their power or usefulness in a noticeable way.

I'd suggest two things here.  First, throw caution to the wind and aim to make these on par with the strongest martial feats out there.  If you want martial types to actually care that they're wearing scale mail instead of chain shirt (or whatever) then the benefits should be very noticeable.  Second, numerical boosts are boring and martials get bunches of them already, so see if you can come up with more qualitative benefits like the Uncanny Dodge benefit or applying the AC boost to touch AC.

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Regarding the weapon styles, the feat-consolidating ones are on the right track (though the overlap with e.g. three of them getting Improved Precise Shot instead of different benefits for each isn't great), but the others are underwhelming.  Not only is it mostly numerical boosts again, but the Two-Handed specialization just hands out "Power Attack, but worse" and the One-Handed specialization's AC bonus is strictly worse than Combat Expertise at the normal and improved level.

Again, I'd suggest going through these and balancing them all to the level of the strongest ones (at a glance, probably the Combat Expertise and Power Attack Specializations), otherwise players are going to largely ignore all the weaker ones.

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Regarding the metamagic stuff...I'mma be honest, the changes are bad across the board.

It's already the case that metamagic basically isn't worth using unless you have some way to mitigate the cost, because the feats with +0 and +1 adjustments are fairly niche or not even worth a single spell level adjustment and the higher-cost feats are usable "as intended" so late in the game that they rarely see play without cost reduction.

Increasing the casting time for metamagicked spells (when sorcerers, who have to do that by default, basically never use metamagic unless they can pick up something to ignore that), adding a cost to Eschew Materials (when costless spell components are basically flavor if you have your 5 gp component pouch and not being able to reach your components while grappled is such a niche problem as to not be worth taking a feat to mitigate), limiting the number of times you can use a given feat (when anyone who actually cares about e.g. Still Spell or Energy Substitution is going to want to apply them to most if not all of their spells), limiting the schools to which metamagic can be applied (when the feats become even less worthwhile if you can't apply e.g. Extend Spell to both your buffs and your summons)...all of those make metamagic strictly worse, and are tantamount to just banning them.

And, of course, if you're aiming for all classes to end up at Tier 3, nerfing metamagic isn't even necessary since stuff like DMM: Persist or arcane spellsurge are presumably going away anyway.  Let warmages and blaster sorcerers metamagic everything to their heart's content, they're not gonna break anything.

What is the specific problem you're trying to solve by changing metamagic, beyond "casters don't need more cool toys"?  Is it the action economy benefit of quickened spells and persistent buffs?  The high damage potential of a maximized empowered energy-admixed ... fireball?  Something else?

2
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: "Tier 3" System Revisions
« on: September 11, 2021, 05:05:48 PM »
Well, I think offering anything for free to non-casters would be welcome. If locking them down is not happy, then I would just throw it open wholesale. While a Rogue going two-hander might be peculiar, if that is what he wants to do then that is what he wants to do.

That's probably for the best.

If you're going to give fighting styles to all the martial classes, I suggest handling them something like the ranger's progressive Favored Enemy bonus, where you pick one fighting style and get its first ability, then when you pick a second style you get its first ability and the first style's second ability, then when you pick a third you get its first, the second's second, and the first's third, and so forth.

A three-tier setup fits with the existing ranger and monk styles, it's better than 5e's approach of handing out a single benefit so you're just like "Welp, I picked Archery and now I'm the most focused in archery that anyone can be," and it means you can make the fighter the best at them (as I assume you want to do) simply by handing out a bunch of fighting style slots to them.

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And as it happens, I did a bit more checking on TWFing. Back in the day, Dex bonus reduced the penalty for TWFing. With a high enough Dex you got the effects of TWF for free. And it could be reduced all the way to 0 penalty. Using that, a Rogue could go high Strength and middling Dexterity, pay feats for TWFing, and switch between going Conan and switching to paired daggers or the like.

I think whether you should do things that way would depend on how you're handling extra attacks in general.  In standard 3e, pretty much everything handing out an extra attack either gives it to you at full BAB or does the "make an extra attack, every attack on your turn including that one takes a -2 penalty" thing.  Having TWF and only TWF be an exception to that would be somewhat inelegant, so just handing out TWF attacks at either -0 or -2 would probably be better.

Or you could split the difference and allow a stat bonus to negate penalties on TWF and flurry and Rapid Shot and any other "extra attack at -2" ability, I suppose, maybe Dex for melee and Str for ranged so any martial type would be rewarded for having both stats high and incentivized to pick up both melee and ranged fighting styles.

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I would go there, but I was worried that might be a bridge too far like my proposed Roguesage.
But if it would work, then sure. Even as you say, make it a fighting style/ACF.
I will have to contemplate that. (On the comfy chair - screw that tree of woe.)

The main difference there is that Rogue has new and worthwhile class features up through at least 10th level, 13th if you want e.g. both Improved Evasion and Skill Mastery, as well as a fairly distinct thematic identity from other classes that lets people tell whether something feels rogue-y or not, whereas the Barbarian is nearly always treated as a 1-level dip for melee types to pick up Rage and Pounce and gets very little that's interesting or powerful after that, and it has an identity that basically comes down to "Fighter...but angry!"

Making it a fighting style would be an interesting choice, especially if you do the 3-tier thing so it could hand out something like Rage at the first step, middling DR at the second step, and some sort of "when below X HP, gain Y benefit" ability like the Berserker Strength ACF.

I went the other way and sacked the ranger for basically being a fighter druid mishmash that took place in the woods, while keeping the barbarian and pushing that class into being very powered up by combat, as well as having a few interesting skills that work for out of combat function.

Admittedly, I also sacked the Paladin for much the same reason

Honestly, while the ranger was originally a fighter subclass in 1e because Aragorn, it really makes more thematic sense as a rogue/druid hybrid with its focus on skills and stealth, its use of lighter armor and weapons, its ability to deal more damage to enemies in certain circumstances, and so on.  So if you're going to keep the barbarian around and buff it up until it has a reason to exist, you might as well do the same with the ranger so you can have a nature-y parallel to the classic party (fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric -> barbarian/druid/ranger/[spirit shaman or other druid-alike class]).

If you're going to ditch any class that could be described thematically as a mix of two other classes with a few perks added on top, well, you might as well go all the way and reduce things to either the classic four or a core set of ten classes (the classic four plus one for each hybrid combination) and turn everything else into subclasses/kits/PrCs/whatever for those.  Getting rid of partial casters but leaving the Angry Fighters around, or vice versa, seems like an odd level of granularity to me.

3
Homebrew and House Rules (D&D) / Re: "Tier 3" System Revisions
« on: September 09, 2021, 05:21:17 PM »
I had a thought overnight of hardwiring something like the Ranger fighting styles into some other classes - making a paladin really sword and board, a rogue really two-weapon, and the barbarian getting two-hander.

I'm not a fan of locking certain classes into certain fighting styles, and going by players' reactions to 4e hard-coding the ranger as the archery/TWF guy, the fighter as the exotic weapon guy, the rogue as the light weapon guy, and so on, I'd best most other folks wouldn't be big fans of that either.

If you must make ranger fighting styles a thing for all martial classes, I'd at least give each class two or three choices instead of locking them into one, and the ranger should get more than that as the fighting style class.  For reference, Dragon Magazine 326 already added grappling, mounted combat, gladiator, 2HF, and throwing combat styles to the ranger, and Unearthed Arcana has 8 different monk fighting styles, so 7-8 styles would be a good number.

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Beyond that, I was also thinking that a *barbarian* should have some of the Ranger or Scout wilderness/environment class abilities to make them a bit more than a frothing whacko with some incidental class abilities that do not matter because nobody cares unless they are frothing at the mouth and unleashing the murderhobo.

Hot take: Barbarian shouldn't be a class, Rage should be an ACF for Fighters and/or Rangers.  Possibly with some totem-themed ACFs for rangers if you really want to bring those in, but the existing Totem stuff is basically just ranger fighting styles with a fancy coat of paint anyway.

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I was wrong about it being under a different header (the subsections are just a bit out of order in the arcane and divine sections), mea culpa, but the divine portion is still a blink-and-you'll-miss-it thing.

So, everyone knows that arcane casters have the ability to save some of their slots for later, because they don't have a particular time-of-day requirement and it's explicitly called out:

Quote from: Magic Overview > Arcane Spells > Preparing Wizard Spells
Spell Preparation Time
After resting, a wizard must study her spellbook to prepare any spells that day. If she wants to prepare all her spells, the process takes 1 hour. Preparing some smaller portion of her daily capacity takes a proportionally smaller amount of time, but always at least 15 minutes, the minimum time required to achieve the proper mental state.

Spell Selection and Preparation
When preparing spells for the day, a wizard can leave some of these spell slots open. Later during that day, she can repeat the preparation process as often as she likes, time and circumstances permitting. During these extra sessions of preparation, the wizard can fill these unused spell slots. She cannot, however, abandon a previously prepared spell to replace it with another one or fill a slot that is empty because she has cast a spell in the meantime. That sort of preparation requires a mind fresh from rest. Like the first session of the day, this preparation takes at least 15 minutes, and it takes longer if the wizard prepares more than one-quarter of her spells.

But not everyone notices that it's also a divine caster thing, because they look at this bit:

Quote from: Magic Overview > Divine Spells > Preparing Divine Spells > Spell Preparation Time
A divine spellcaster chooses and prepares spells ahead of time, just as a wizard does. However, a divine spellcaster does not require a period of rest to prepare spells. Instead, the character chooses a particular part of the day to pray and receive spells. The time is usually associated with some daily event. If some event prevents a character from praying at the proper time, he must do so as soon as possible. If the character does not stop to pray for spells at the first opportunity, he must wait until the next day to prepare spells.

...and don't notice this bit:

Quote from: Magic Overview > Divine Spells > Preparing Divine Spells > Spell Selection and Preparation
A divine spellcaster selects and prepares spells ahead of time through prayer and meditation at a particular time of day. The time required to prepare spells is the same as it is for a wizard (1 hour), as is the requirement for a relatively peaceful environment. A divine spellcaster does not have to prepare all his spells at once. However, the character’s mind is considered fresh only during his or her first daily spell preparation, so a divine spellcaster cannot fill a slot that is empty because he or she has cast a spell or abandoned a previously prepared spell.

EDIT: Swordsage'd.  Curse you, laggy post loading times!

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D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: ToB Campaign Idea
« on: June 23, 2021, 10:33:26 PM »
That part I can't help with, unfortunately, since I haven't used any of that homebrew in my games since the Gleemax days and don't really have an opinion on any stuff aside from my own contributions (which are of course uniformly awesome and flawless).

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D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: ToB Campaign Idea
« on: June 23, 2021, 01:59:08 PM »
I don't suppose you kept the references around (which pages/sections the different schools and setting elements are mentioned in)? Most of those little fluff pieces are tiny things that don't go into any real detail, scattered around all over the book, but you've piqued my curiosity about them now.

I did, actually, at least for a good chunk of them.  Here are my notes, spoilered for space:

(click to show/hide)

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D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: ToB Campaign Idea
« on: June 22, 2021, 11:38:53 AM »
I'm actually running a ToB-focused PbP campaign (well, kinda running, it's been on life support during the pandemic) with a fairly similar premise and outline.  The out-of-character thread is here if you want to take a look at the setting and houserule information, but the gist of it is thus:

The campaign started roughly two years after the fall of the Temple of the Nine Swords, and a bunch of successor temples have popped up, the two largest being the Temple of the Four Seasons (the PCs' temple, which teaches Desert Wind, Diamond Mind, Iron Heart, and Stone Dragon, and has a general philosophy of "stick with the original Temple's teachings and focus exclusively on the Sublime Way as much as possible") and the Temple of the Unconquered Sun (a rival temple, which teaches Devoted Spirit, Setting Sun, Shadow Hand, and Tiger Claw, and has a general philosophy of "the Temple fell because it was too rigid and dogmatic, mix and match the Sublime Way with other paths to form something greater").  All the PCs were students at the original Temple who survived in various ways and are now Masters teaching new students at their new temple.

The general setting is the "implicit setting" of ToB, in that everything mentioned in the ToB flavor text definitely exists in the world and nothing else does unless it's specifically brought in, so the world map is based entirely on nations and landmarks mentioned in the text, the minor temples and NPCs take their names from the book, and so on.  There are also some houserules and flavor changes to lower the magic level a bit and justify why the ToB classes are worth pursuing (TL;DR: flavor-wise magic has a basis in ki and you have to train your body and mind in unison, so mechanically every caster has to be a gish and thus pure-ToB characters can compete with multiclassed casters at high levels).

The main plot is based on this bit of fluff:

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The blade known as Supernal Clarity was brought to the Temple of the Nine Swords by Reshar, the first true master of the Sublime Way. Though some martial adepts curse the sword’s name, claiming that lust for this blade initiated the downfall of the temple, all know in their hearts that a weapon is merely the extension of its wielder and can never be blamed for its use—or its misuse. (DC 15)

Kaziir-Thet’s theft of Supernal Clarity proved to be the beginning of the end of the golden age for the Temple of the Nine Swords. Why the rakshasa prince stole that particular sword was widely discussed, but the truth was never really known because the thief was never brought to justice.

If stealing one of the Nine Swords led to the Temple's downfall, then obviously bringing them all back together would allow the Temple to be reforged, kind of like Stratovarius suggested, so the party has been going around to various smaller temples, making alliances, recovering the Nine Swords, and so on, and as their home temple has expanded beyond its four original disciplines it's started to resemble the original Temple more and more.  Once all of the Swords are reclaimed (and the party figures out why not a single temple on the entire continent seems to be teaching White Raven....), then [REDACTED] is going to [REDACTED] and [REDACTED] will finally [REDACTED]. ;)

Obviously things don't line up exactly with what you're thinking of (I avoided use of homebrew disciplines to keep the plot tightly focused on the original nine, only one of my PCs dipped into non-ToB stuff, etc.), but you're free to borrow things from my game if you'd like and I'd be happy to help you bounce ideas around.

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Other RPGs / Re: Review of Pathfinder 2nd Edition
« on: April 24, 2021, 06:25:58 PM »
I think most PF1 racial traits are shit and ignore them so them being gone made no impact on me whatsoever.

They're definitely unimpressive on the whole, but the point is that the idea of ancestry feats was pitched as "you can be a dwarf cleric who gets more dwarfy and more clericy as you level, unlike in PF1 where your race is something you only care about at 1st level!" as if they're basically taking a PF1 dwarf cleric and adding both dwarfy and clericy perks, when in fact it's an illusion and the PF2 dwarfy stuff merely attempts to reach parity with where the PF1 dwarfy stuff started.

Regardless of whether one considers the racial perks in question to be flavorful or powerful or whatever, the end result is that the marketing pitch was deceptive and the mechanics fail to meet their goals.

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I also don't compare PF2 to 5E more than I would compare it with any other system that is being published right now (of which there are many).  I don't see them as related in any way.

I mean, PF1 and 4e aren't related in any way either, in terms of mechanics or flavor or setting or design philosophy or anything else, they could hardly be more different while still being D&D-clone games...but PF1 was created in direct response to 4e being the next big thing and the changes between 3e and 4e being perceived as bad ones, and was explicitly marketed to people who liked 3e over 4e and wanted to keep playing it (or something really close), so one can still talk about why certain decisions were made in PF1 relative to 4e, whether keeping or ditching certain things from 3e was good or bad, and similar.

Likewise, the subject of a "Pathfinder 2" was a topic on the Paizo forums for years, both positively (e.g. "I love the trend of lots of partial casters, I hope when PF 2e comes out they use that pattern for more classes") and negatively (e.g. "I switched to PF so I could keep playing 3e but in a supported form, PF 2e better not change too much"), and after PF Unchained came out in 2015 everyone was assuming PF2 was right around the corner and talking about how they hoped Paizo would listen to their feedback and tighten up the system and basically make it a "PF 1.5" and so forth...but when it actually dropped it was dramatically different from PF1 and was obviously taking a lot of design cues (and the entire marketing pitch) from 5e, hence the backlash from the players who just wanted "PF1, but more so."

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Lastly, in my opinion Starfinder is a massive improvement over PF1 in every way and would never just play PF1 in space.

Taken on its own merits, Starfinder is definitely head and shoulders above PF1 as a standalone game, sure.  But it's in a weird middle ground where if you want to play "Pathfinder in space" because you specifically want to have alchemists and summoners on spaceships and all the Golarion baggage and such it's much worse at providing that experience than just pulling a Spelljammer and literally using the PF rules in a space setting, while if you specifically don't want all the PF-specific baggage there's no reason to choose it over a bunch of other sci-fantasy RPGs like e.g. Stars Without Number.

PF2 is in the same space, to me.  If you're looking for more Pathfinder, PF2 utterly fails to deliver, and if you're not looking for more Pathfinder, why play it?

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Other RPGs / Re: Review of Pathfinder 2nd Edition
« on: April 21, 2021, 08:02:48 PM »
My overall opinion is that PF2 is basically the bad/meh parts of PF1 (over-fiddliness in customization options, fear of handing out interesting abilities at higher levels, etc.) plus the bad/meh parts of 5e (bland classes, tightly constrained numbers leading to samey characters, etc.) with none of the redeeming features of either game, so I'm in the "one step forward, two steps back" camp, personally.

That said, a few comments:

We still have the familiar initiative, rounds, and turns, but during your turn you have three actions to use which aren't classified into types and so you can just do whatever (although there are "activities" that require more than one action).  Casting a spell is called out as requiring two of your three actions.  Free actions still exist.

Worth noting is that the main benefits of moving from the standard/move/swift setup to the three-equal-actions setup were supposed to be, according to the developers in the earliest playtest discussions, (A) simplifying actions for all those poor players who couldn't figure out full attacks and complicated combat options and (B) scaling spell action costs so you could cast minor spells in addition to your big guns (without needing a Quicken Spell equivalent) or spend more actions to boost a spell inherently, with actions thematically mapping to verbal/somatic/material components but mechanically being determined based on the spell's power.

Point (A) turned out to be false, since iterative attack penalties are still there (and martial types are capped at 3 iteratives instead of 4 except for 20th-level fighters) and previous free and/or combo-able options like "using Power Attack" or "having a shield do anything at all" are now their own actions and thus harder to assess compared to plain ol' attacking in terms of effectiveness.

Point (B) turned out to be false, since basically all spells just default to "2 actions, V and S components," and where they don't do that they basically have an action cost based on their PF1 components, and where they don't do that the spells that can be cast with more actions for better effect are just laughably bad past low levels.  Exhibit A is everyone's favorite, magic missile, which on the upside can be cast with 3 actions to launch 3 missiles at 1st level (winner: PF2, unless your DM thinks that's unbalanced in which case PF1) but on the downside requires you to spend a 7th-level slot and 1 action or a 5th-lvel slot and 3 actions to get 5 missiles, which a PF1 (and 3e) caster gets with a 1st-level slot and 1 action just for having CL 9 (winner: PF1 by a mile).

For all that the scaling-action system is theoretically better on paper in terms of explanations to new players and use in play, in practice the actual PF2 implementation is hilariously terrible.

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When it comes to character creation, we're doing something new.  All stats start at a 10 and are then adjusted by boosts (which increase by 2 unless the score is already 18+ and then it increases by 1) or by flaws (which decrease by 2).  Ancestry, Background, and Class selection all adjust ability scores, however a level 1 character can't have any ability score higher than 18.

Y'know, at least 5e lets you get up to 20 at 1st level.  Hard-capping things at 1st level just ensures that characters wlll be more same-y at those levels if they try to max out their key stat (which they almost certainly will), especially since the multitude of Free boosts means that increasing your key stat is trivial.

I just don't understand the reasoning behind this setup.  I guess they felt that handing out more ability boosts and then hard-capping ability scores would lead to more diversified characters stat-wise, maybe?  But if you're gonna do that, don't just impose a bunch of caps to ensure cookie-cutter characters, incentivize characters to have secondary and tertiary stats characters actually care about!  This isn't difficult, we've known this since at least 2006 with 3e's dual-stat casters and ToB's secondary mental stats that were nice if you boosted them but not overly punitive if you didn't.

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You also get an Ancestry feat at 1st level and an additional feat every 4 levels thereafter.  This is completely separate from anything gained from class levels, and conceptually I like it.  Your dwarf can be dwarfy without having to decide if they'd rather be dwarfy or clericy.

Conceptually it's great, yeah, but in practice it leaves the different races feeling less dwarfy or elfy or whatever.  You get 5 ancestry feats over a character's career, but the races lack their traditional racial features to start off with, so a PF2 Dwarf or Elf doesn't feel as "elfy" as a PF1 Dwarf or Elf.

For elves, they're missing the elven weapon proficiencies, trancing instead of sleeping and sleep immunity, perception bonuses, CL/Spellcraft bonuses, and Enchantment save bonuses to start, and to (only partially) recover those they have to spend all of their ancestral feats: Elven Weapon Familiarity (minimum 1st, has the full effect), Unwavering Mein (minimum 1st, doesn't actually grant sleep immunity), either Ageless Patience (minimum 5th, requires spending extra actions for the bonus) or Elven Instincts (minimum 5th, only applies to initiative), Elven Lore (minimum 1st, skill bonus only), and Ancestral Suspicion (minimum 5th, has the full effect).  Congrats, the PF2 Elf is as elf-y at 19th level as a PF1 Elf was at 1st.

For dwarves, it's even worse: they're missing seven different traits, so even if they spent all of their ancestral feats on the equivalent picks (Stonecunning for Stonecunning, Eye for Treasure for Greed, Vengeful Hatred for Hatred, etc.) they can't ever get everything back.

Granted, if you didn't care as much about those specific traits it doesn't seem so bad...but the things you replace them with are the kinds of things a PF1 alternate race would get, and those still got 4-7 nice racial perks right at character creation, so whatever way you slice it, PF2 starting characters feel much more like humans in funny hats than any other race and that feeling persists for most if not all of the game.

Maybe if they handed out a whopping five ancestral feats at each of those five levels the system would be good for customization and feeling [race]-y, but as it stands it just fails to achieve what it set out to do.

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Animal companions and familiars are massively nerfed compared to PF1E/D&D 3.5  Animal companions are gained from feats, require you to spend one of your actions to give them action, and can only gain item bonuses to speed and AC (and AC bonuses are capped for them).  Animal companions also get have stat blocks that are quite stripped down (abilities modifiers instead of scores for example) and most of their abilities are derived from your level.  Also, level 1 characters start with young companions, having them grow up requires spending more feats.

Familiars are also gained by feats (although class features might grant the feat), require spending actions to grant them actions, and have states derived from yours.  They also don't get any sort of attacks and don't even have stat blocks so no super powering your familiars into combat machines in this game.

Companion creatures are even nerfed compared to 5e (where the find familiar feat at least gives you a familiar that's an actual independent creature with its own stat block that doesn't cease to exist for the round if you don't spend actions on it), which is pretty impressive.

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The deception skill can create a diversion so you can sneak, it's nice to see that as a general skill use.

That was actually a general skill use in 3e, I didn't even notice they'd taken that out in PF1 until you mentioned it here and I went to look at the skill description.  Wonder why that was ever taken out (aside from the usual "Jason Buhlman and Skip Williams hate rogues" reason, of course).

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Skill feats have both a level requirement and a proficiency requirement (for example, if you want the feat that lets you identify spells as a free action you need to be level 7 and have Master proficiency in one of the skills that can identify spells, along with knowing another feat).

With the fact that you gain skill feats independently from other kinds of feats, and that there are feats here for all kinds of stuff, I see this as another plus.

As with actions and ancestry feats, this is another "great in theory, terrible in practice" change.  To use this particular example, in 3e you can identify a spell being cast with no action simply by having 1 rank in Spellcraft, no need to wait for 7th level to do that, let alone needing to take a feat to be able to perform one of the core uses of the skill.

That's a general trend of PF2, frankly: things you used to get for free (especially very-flavorful-but-not-very-powerful stuff and things you need to do your main job) are all taken away and then doled back out piecemeal, but with at most half the effectiveness and having at least twice the level prerequisite.  It really gives the impression that the PF2 devs were petrified of giving characters anything fun or useful, which is something already seen in the PF1 era and only exacerbated by drawing on 5e for inspiration.

If I were to ever run a PF2 game (gods forbid), I feel like I'd need to hand out three or four times the normal number of feats and give the players four or five actions per round instead of three just to maintain parity with what (and how much) you could do in 3e/PF1, before we'd even get to any theoretical benefits the system in general has over the PF1 one.

So, yeah, overall a major step back even from Starfinder, which I personally found to be a major step back from PF1 (though only as a matter of playstyle preference compared to just playing "PF1! In! Space!", rather than a matter of objectively bad math and design like with PF2).  It's no surprise to me that the reception of PF2 by PF1 fans was nearly universally negative, and just makes you wonder why they tried to mix in 5e stuff and make the game worse for it when anyone sticking with PF1 likely did so because they weren't a fan of 5e to start with.

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D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: [3.5]Node and research
« on: November 30, 2020, 08:01:06 PM »
You can use Estate Transference to move the whole thing to a demiplane - that's my usual go-to, and then build the plane up around it, as once you have it' you'll want to expand it.

Is there an official 3e conversion of estate transference somewhere?  The only equivalent thing I'm aware of is the Planeshifter's planar area swap feature, and that's a temporary effect.

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Honestly in PF doing things like wearing Mnemonic Vestment or playing a Half-Elf so you can Paragon Surge into temporary extra spells known feats are more like mid-op at best nowadays. It's pretty much considered part and parcel of the spontaneous spellcaster kit.

I get the impression, from the things you've mentioned in this thread, that PF has done a lot to blur the prepared/spontaneous divide; I haven't touched it myself since pretty early in its run.  With pure 3e, stuff like Mage of the Arcane Order or Ancestral Relic cheese are the best a sorcerer is going to get for faking a bit of wizardry, so I can see where the divergence in advice and play experience comes from there.

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When it comes to dual-progression casters, honestly, a Cleric/Wizard can afford to dump Charisma all the way. As long as you have 18 in both casting stats you're pretty much fine. However, most dual-progression casters suffer a lot for being behind 3 whole levels, so it's not particularly recommended. You can do it, though, but typically you will use early entry tricks to make it worthwhile, using advancing a spellcasting prestige class that has accelerated progression.
[...]
Moreover, for dual-progression, you usually want to use methods to ensure both prepared spellcasters cast using the same ability score, if possible.

In my experience, Wizard/Archivist is much more common than Wizard/Cleric, though that will of course vary by group.  Almost all of the [Arcanist]/Cleric builds I've seen have leaned heavily on Divine Metamagic (either metamagicking blasting/debuffing spells and using the arcane side for utility, or DMM: Persisting a bunch of buffs and using the arcane side for offense), so they wanted high Cha for that.  Not to mention that if Dragonlance feats are on the table, a Sorcerer/Cleric going Cha-SAD with Dynamic Priest has more synergy potential (diplomancy and such) than a Wizard/Cleric going Int-SAD with Academic Priest.

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Also if your party has two Wizards, as I noted above, they can both copy out of each other's spellbooks which will usually boost their spell access significantly, especially in campaigns where your Wizard doesn't have easy access to other Wizards and scrolls to copy spells out of. Honestly an all-Wizard party is extremely powerful, even in the low levels, so it's not like you have to differentiate yourself by picking another class either.

I've run an all-wizard party before that got a ton of mileage out of free spell swapping, but that game started at level 7 or thereabouts so they could already use PrCs to differentiate their builds; I've never seen a multi-wizard party in a low-level-start and/or limited-scribing game, as using each other as the primary source of spells means lower-level wizards tend to be more same-y unless they have essentially opposed specializations (in which case spell swapping is of limited benefit).  If two players are fine with having basically the same capabilities, though, then it's definitely a good option.

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Also, it was mentioned that a psionic party doesn't need a Cleric because it has no need of buffs/healing/utility, but Clerics bring so much more to a party than just support spells. With the right domains, spell selection (Clerics get access to their entire class list as divine casters too, so they can help themselves to any fitting spell on their entire spell list whenever they take a break to prepare spells), and maybe some other tricks and Prestige Classes if you want to go further, Clerics can pretty much be Wizards in plate with better will saves and perception checks if they want to be.

It's not that they can't benefit from a cleric at all (because, again, adding a wizard or cleric to a party is never a bad thing), just that adding one to a party of full and partial manifesters with plenty of existing self-buffing gishiness is going to be much less of a comparative benefit than adding it to a party with no divine casters or less magic in general.  In that scenario, one might want to go for a bit more gap-filling variety and try out something like a face bard or an illusion-focused sorcerer (or of course something further afield like a stealth-focused swordsage).

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The biggest reasons to play spontaneous casters is when you have methods to gain access to your entire class's spell list or you're deliberately specializing into a more limited array of spells and would prefer flexibility in how many times you cast them to diversity in how many spells you can cast.

The former is definitely true for high-op games, but not necessarily in low- or mid-op ones.  Playing a spontaneous caster for party dynamics reasons can still leave you with a perfectly functional character, just like a wizard can get a long in those games without a lot of spontaneous tricks.

13
Obviously arcane prepared casters tend to suffer a lot more when they don't have easy access to ways to expand their spellbooks, at which point they become slightly more awkward Sorcerers. This is even worse when the DM uses setting rules to limit the types of spells that can be found (although usually they do a Core-only restriction which is not painful since most of the best spells come from Core anyway). Usually though they can copy spells from other Wizards.
[...]
That said, prepared arcane casters also tend to rise in strength when there are multiple prepared arcane casters to teach each other their spells.

There are two corollaries to this:

1) Prepared casters vary in effectiveness on a per-campaign basis much more than spontaneous ones do, so when playing a prepared caster it's beneficial to sit down with the DM beforehand and ask a bit about the campaign (and if playing with a new DM, about their DMing style).

Will there be plenty of of downtime for scroll scribing and spell copying, or will it be a rollercoaster from one plot point to another?  Are there wizards' guilds in major cities where one can find rare scrolls and swap spells with the guild members, or do wizards camp out in towers on the fringes of society and refuse to work together?  Are the whole wizard list and all the various wizard ACFs available, or are there limitations based on sourcebook (e.g. "The game is in Eberron, so no FR-specific spells allowed") or setting flavor (e.g. "Only members of the Tenebrous Academy can specialize in Enchantment or Illusion and take those ACFs").  And so on.

Even if the answers to those questions are "No downtime, no friendly wizards, no setting-specific spells, Final Destination" you can run a wizard just fine, but it's much better to know that stuff up front and plan for it than have it sneak up on you mid-game.  If you don't do that and do end up getting surprised with highly unfavorable circumstances, that can contribute to the "Wait, why would I ever want to play a wizard?" effect.

2) If it turns out downtime will be rare and copying spells will be difficult, there are bunches of ways to expand on the number of spells you can get for free on level-up.  The Generalist Wizardry ACF and the Collegiate Wizard and Aerenal Arcanist feats are the easiest and most well-known ways to add to your free spells, but there are more obscure ones out there (like the second affiliation benefit for The One and the Five in PHB2) as well.  So it's certainly the case that a low-downtime no-scribing campaign makes a wizard lose some comparative advantage over a sorcerer, but if you know that will be the case going into things you can easily compensate for it.

-----

Power and I have both hammered a lot on why prepared casters are actually better, but it's worth noting that there actually are some times when playing a spontaneous caster is (or at least can be) better.  When exactly those might be will, again, be very campaign-dependent, but the three major scenarios where that applies are thus:

1) If you're building a tightly-themed caster.  A generalist wizard trying to cover as many bases as possible is strictly superior to a generalist sorcerer trying to do the same, but if you specifically want to build "a pyromancer" (or "a shadow mage" or whatever other themed caster) it can be better to play a sorcerer than a wizard because having several dozen fire spells at your fingertips at all times can feel more like a master of all things incendiary than a wizard who has to pick and choose a bunch of different fire spells, even taking things like Uncanny Forethought into account.

And of course if the theme you pick is "tricky caster" or "spooky caster" then the beguiler and dread necromancer are even better choices for that than an Enchantment-/Illusion-focused or Necromancy-focused sorcerer.

2) If you're building a dual-progression caster.  When combining magic systems (or even two classes of the same type like Ultimate Magus), the two things to keep in mind if you want to get the best out of the build and not lose caster levels for nothing is (A) both sides using the same key ability score(s) so you can double-dip for DCs and bonus spells/PP/etc. and (B) trying to avoid redundancy so each side fills in gaps where the other side is weak rather than having lots of overlap (unless you're trying for a tightly-themed dual-progression caster, which is its own can of worms).

In such a scenario, even if e.g. Wizard/Cleric is theoretically stronger than Sorcerer/Cleric in terms of spell breadth and versatility, the latter may be better because (A) a cleric/sorcerer shares Cha in common between the two and so needs two high stats whereas a wizard/cleric would want to keep all three mental stats high (or at least Int and Wis high and Cha moderate), which would be difficult and/or expensive, and (B) a sorcerer/cleric has all the benefits of both a prepared caster (awesome downtime utility and grabbing niche spells) and a spontaneous one (lots of in-combat choices and the ability to spam spells) and can split their spells known and -prepared foci accordingly, while a wizard/cleric doubles up on the prepared caster strengths and can end up less flexible day-to-day and a bookkeeping nightmare in general.

3) If you have an unusually large party or one with an unusual composition.  Fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric (and its variations like warblade/wu jen/scout/favored soul) is the classic baseline party for a reason, and most advice about building full casters assumes you'll be the only caster of your magic system in the party and thus need to cover everything yourself, but that advice doesn't necessarily apply if that's not the case.

If you're playing an arcane caster in a three- or four-person party with other arcane casters (e.g. a duskblade as the fighter-alike and a spellthief as the rogue-alike), then not only do you not need to cover all the arcane bases, you don't want to cover all the arcane bases because then you and the other arcanists will be stepping on each others' toes a lot.  Much better in that case to realize that the duskblade and spellthief have the debuffing, stealth, and short-range blasting spells covered and go with a dread necromancer for minions or a bard for buffing, or something like that.

If you're playing the only caster of your type in a party of five or six PCs, you're not going to be stepping on another PC's toes directly but you are probably going to overlap with another caster.  A party of fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric/psion/druid is going to see a bunch of overlap between the wizard and psion and between the cleric and druid if the former both focus on blasting and summoning and the latter both focus on healing and utility...and a party of psychic warrior/seer/lurk/ardent/wilder doesn't have a single non-psionicist in it but really isn't going to benefit from the breadth of a cleric with all of the self-buffing, self-healing, and utility already on display.

In those cases, playing a spontaneous caster to focus your choices and clearly signal to the other players what role(s) you're going to fill is definitely a benefit.  Of course adding a wizard or cleric to those parties isn't ever going to be a bad thing, and I have actually run for a party full of focused casters where the wizard took the opportunity to focus on all those crazy niche spells you rarely see cast in an actual game, but it's a lot easier to stay in your lane and avoid scope creep as a spontaneous caster than as a prepared one.

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Do prepared casters generally do better in campaigns with significant amounts of downtime?  The 2-3 year campaign we played had us on a strict timer for about 2 years of real time, meaning taking even one day off to craft something (a Healing Belt for my Druid in this case) was a significant investment.  We also were rarely in a position to ambush foes or pre-buff.

Better in the sense that the more downtime they get for spell scribing, magic item creation, divinations, and so forth, the better off they'll be, yes.  But it's not the case that a lack of downtime penalizes them or anything--they take the same amount of time to refresh spells each day that spontaneous casters do, after all, and prepared casters (or, more specifically, the stereotypical fighter/wizard/rogue/cleric party) are the baseline against which published adventures (which often have strict timers or other railroad-y elements preventing lots of downtime) are designed, so by definition they're not disadvantaged there.

Pretty much all forum advice assumes zero downtime, you'll notice.  If you look up any wizard/cleric/etc. handbooks, they'll generally either not cover item creation at all or mark it down for being situational because you can't assume a given DM will give you any downtime, in the same way that item-reliant classes like fighters are marked down because you can't assume a given DM will give you any particular items.

As far as ambushing and pre-buffing not being an option for you, I find it pretty unlikely that you could never fit in a round or two to pop some 1 minute/level or 10 minutes/level buffs when combat was expected, or that timetables were so tight that taking an extra 15 minutes a few times a day would completely screw you over.

When I've heard stories about similar parties, it's generally been the case that either (A) the party hasn't done a good job of scouting, ignored stealth, and so on and thus rushed into encounters when they could indeed have slowed down, made plans, and pre-buffed, or (B) the DM is a fairly railroad-y one who gives guards and other stationary foes unreasonably high Spot and Listen modifiers (and mobile/skirmishing/ambushing enemies unreasonably high Hide and Move Silently) to prevent scouting and avoiding encounters, conjures up not-previously-existent reinforcements and wandering monsters the moment the party tries to take a breather, is overly stingy with Knowledge check results and the like to prevent strategizing, and so forth--or the DM is fine, but is running a module where things always happen at the speed of plot and everything is supposed to be unnecessarily mysterious.

Which is not to say that either of those is necessarily the case for your group(s), just that one should be careful not to conflate "prepared casters are worse overall" with "prepared casters are hit hard by X, Y, and Z party-/DM-/campaign-dependent factor(s) and so appear worse in those circumstances."

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You're missing a few other differences between prepared and spontaneous casters.

Oh, definitely, but I figured two screens' worth of rambling was long enough. :D

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  • Second, prepared spellcasters should not prepare once for the day and be done with it. Prepared spellcasters are supposed to leave some of their spell slots open and then flexibly prepare them for the upcoming encounter's needs based on scouting. This kind of tailor-made solution is extremely powerful.

In theory, yes, but in practice there's a surprising number of long-time caster players who don't do this.  I've run into quite a few players who didn't know that was a thing you could do at all, and quite a few more who thought it was a wizard-only thing because divine casters have a fixed time to pray for spells each day and the rule about them being able to prep spells later in the day is under a different header in the Magic chapter than it is for wizards.

So even though that's technically a baseline advantage of prepared casters, I generally count that among the more advanced player tricks, like the tidbit about multiple long-duration Abjuration spells clustered together being easier to Search for.


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  • However, there are a lot of potent spells that only prepared spellcasters tend to have because they are generally too niche even though they can be extremely valuable to have access to (most healing spells, for instance, but also spells that offer unusual movement types, allow you to interact with limited types of targets, or let you fish for certain forms of information).

Indeed.  Prepared casting is absolutely core to D&D's idiosyncratic magic toolbox, and without it casters tend to regress toward the mean of preparing as many generically-useful spells as possible, making casters less interesting and making things more railroady on both sides of the screen.  The various proposals to make all casters spontaneous/replace Vancian with spell points/etc. that come up as a fad every so often all have, as a hidden design goal, effectively deleting speak with plants and hallucinatory terrain and similar spells because no spontaneous caster can afford to take them.


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  • Fourth, there are ways for your prepared caster to end up casting (semi)-spontaneously.

Yep, even just sticking to 3e wizards, there's the Spontaneous Divination and Spontaneous Summoning ACFs, the Alacritous Cogitation and Uncanny Forethought feats, and the Mage of the Arcane Order and Magelord PrCs for giving a ton of spontaneous casting for very little investment.  And one shouldn't forget that non-evil clerics can spontaneously cast all Sanctified spells (and even though BoVD doesn't say the same, most folks do the same for non-good clerics and Corrupt spells by analogy).

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Apologies in advance for the wall o' text, but the topic of Vancian casting vs. alternate systems is one that's near and dear to my heart.

Considering that various campaigns I played started at level 1 and ended at level 3 or 4 (and, again, rarely went beyond level 6)
[...]
At lowish levels (1-9), Wizards were more favorable.  They had fewer spell slots than Sors, but their day-by-day repertoire flexibility mattered more.
[...]
Only after playing a Druid from level 1-11 did I realize the power of spontaneously-cast spells.

While you toss in the topic of level ranges as an aside, I think it's actually key to why you might feel spontaneous casting is better and more fun overall while the forum consensus is the reverse.

At low levels (1-5 or so), prepared is nearly strictly superior to spontaneous, because (as you noted) with only a handful of spells available spontaneous casters get pigeonholed pretty hard and getting access to the key boosts of 2nd- and 3rd-level spells a whole level ahead of time is huge.  Then at low-mid levels (5-10 or so) spontaneous casting suddenly starts to look a lot more appealing, because both prepared and spontaneous casters have "enough" spell diversity and spell slots to get by most days, the relative combat power boost of 4th-level spells over 3rds is nowhere near that of 3rds over 2nds, and you start having enough gold to spend on wands and scrolls to cover a lot of the utility gap.  For folks who mostly end campaigns in the low-mid levels, I can definitely see why a lot of people gravitate to spontaneous casters over time.

But the thing I think you're missing is that at the high-mid and high levels, things flip back to favoring prepared casting.  5th-level spells shine for their utility, not their combat power, so a Wizard 9 having a single 5th-level spell where a Sorcerer 9 has none isn't really a big deal (e.g. you can always get a scroll if your 9th-level party needs to teleport somewhere) but a Wizard 14 having a bunch of 5th-level utility slots while a Sorcerer 14 has just 3 5th-level spells known which are likely to be more combat-focused actually is a pretty huge deal.  Reliable divinations start to come online, so the ability to predict challenges gets much easier and the effectiveness gap between a spontaneous caster's spells known and a prepared caster's generic daily loadout narrows considerably.  High-level play starts to revolve around having layers of buffs and access to broad utility, something spontaneous casters have difficulty keeping up with because they can't just dedicate 1/3 of their daily slots to that and have the rest of them for combat--and consumables for mid- and high-level spells are increasingly expensive and aren't sustainable to use every day, so you can't just buy lots of scrolls and wands to cover gaps anymore.  And so on.

You're definitely right that there's an issue with "forum logic," but it's not that it's all handwavey theorycrafting, it's that people just repeat "wizards > sorcerers" as a shorthand because they're talking in generalities, without getting into the fact that the degree to which that's true varies by level range, type of campaign, and so on.

It's much like how the Tier system aggregates many different optimization levels and people who just rely on that and don't get into the nuances often argue it's all theorycrafting and doesn't match their experiences.  At newb optimization levels where new players don't have a good grasp on what spells are good, what kinds of challenges they'll face, and the like, wizards are bad and sorcerers are utter shit because a sorcerer's bad choices haunt them forever but a wizard can fix their issues with a bit of research.  At low optimization levels where blasty wizards and healy clerics rule the roost, sorcerers are great and wizards are meh because the party casters are only doing one or two things anyway so spamming spells is king.  At moderate optimization levels where players start fiddling with minionmancy and seriously using divinations, wizards and sorcerers are mostly on par because, again, there are only one or two tricks in play but the wizard can get a bit deeper and broader with each.  At high optimization levels, wizards leave sorcerers in the dust for obvious reasons.  Yet if a new player just looks at the Tier system that says wizards are T1 and sorcerers are T2 so obviously wizards are strictly superior, they'll miss that detail and not get why their 5th-level evoker is falling behind their buddy's 5th-level summoning-focused sorcerer.

I have a lot of personal experience with the prepared-vs.-spontaneous-at-various-levels issue, since nearly all of my campaigns run the full gamut from low to high levels instead of running into the (apparently common) phenomenon of dying out around mid levels; in the past decade, 80% of the campaigns I ran made it to 18th level or higher, and the lowest level any of them ended was 12th.  Several of my players started off always playing prepared casters because they were "stronger" or always playing spontaneous ones because they were "easier," but as they got a feel for the playstyles at different level ranges they've all gotten more comfortable mixing and matching based on what the starting level will be, what their concept is, and so on.

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Dwelling on the possibility of power is often more appealing to theorycrafting and dreaming than the likely reality of what people face.  Being able to change what spells you have available to you every time you prepare spells (normally daily) can be a huge boon, but, at least in my experience, people don't play that way.  They pick a certain number of favorite spell preps on a near-daily basis (like grease and enlarge person every day on a Wizard) and might swap out a spell or two per spell level to do something different (like preparing color spray one day and magic missile the next).  In short, prepared casting focuses on what you can be while spontaneous casting tells you more of what you are.

This is a bit of a misunderstanding about the benefits of prepared casting.  Having a standardized spell loadout is totally fine and fairly common; a wizard who completely shuffles his spells every day is likely ditching effective spells for no reason, and the benefit of being able to change just one or two spells each day is overrated.  It's the ability to have one standard loadout for adventuring and a completely different one for downtime that really matters.

You mentioned Red Hand of Doom, which is a good case study because it starts and ends in the "wizards > sorcerers" range but plays through the "sorcerers are more fun than wizards" range.  If you know that you're heading into a Red Hand of Doom game, your party wizard and party sorcerer are probably going to have very similar spells available most of the time: there are lots of large groups of goblinoids so load up on AoE blasting, there are lots of dragons so pack energy resistance buffs and anti-flyer spells, and so on.  But where the sorcerer is stuck with those spells every day, the wizard can take a downtime day to completely swap those out for scrying to try to figure out where the Red Hand forces are, animate dead to get a bunch of hobgoblin skeletons as meat shields (er, lack-of-meat shields), sending to be able to update allies at long distance rather than flying back and forth all the time, and so on, and then go right back to a combat loadout the next day--to say nothing of scribing a scroll or two or crafting a wand to allow more divining or reanimation or whatever on combat days.

A single day of the wizard's downtime casting every in-game week or so can make an incredibly dramatic difference at the campaign level even if at the tactical level the wizard and sorcerer play identically and even if the sorcerer largely edges out the wizard on the firepower front.  And of course if the party successfully finishes Red Hand of Doom and the DM says "Congrats, you saved the country from Tiamat's armies of goblinoids and dragons, but now she's made a deal with Bel and there are armies of devils invading your world!", it's easy for the wizard to pivot from the fireballs and energy resistance buffs that are good against dragons to the lightning bolts and
anti-teleportation/-scrying wards that are needed against high-CR devils, while the sorcerer is stuck with what he already has.

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There's more than one way to play any edition of D&D, and I felt that spontaneous casting is the better, more fun, and more convenient way to handle casting.

Don't get me wrong, spontaneous casting is generally more fun if you don't like the bookkeeping, and on the rare occasions I get to play instead of DM I, too, try to get some amount of spontaneous casting on my prepared casters so I always have fallback options when something unexpected comes up.  But I think by singing the praises of spontaneous casting over prepared you're swinging the pendulum too far in the other direction.

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WotC eventually implemented spontaneous casting of sorts as standard for every casting class in D&D 5e, at least in the 5e PHB.  (Prepared casters chose a certain number of spells/spell levels to prepare and cast them spontaneously.  Fully spontaneous casters remained fully spontaneous with limited numbers of spells known.)

I see this comparison a lot--"5e went more spontaneous and everything got better!" and the like--but it's flawed for a few reasons.  First, it's no longer comparing prepared to spontaneous, it's comparing a best-of-both-worlds pseudo-Vancian setup to plain ol' spontaneous, so obviously that version ends up looking better.

Second, the change was necessary due to how casting in general changed in 5e.  If you're going to require people to heighten spells to be relevant instead of auto-scaling by CL, you obviously can't require people to prepare everything at the beginning of the day, just like how 3e psionics has condensed powers and augmentation because of the differences between power points and spell slots, and just making psions prepare powers or letting wizards use spell points would be a total non-starter.

And third, most of the comparative benefit of prepared casting goes away in an environment where spell selections are incredibly limited, good utility spells are heavily nerfed, removed, or nonfunctional, and all the downtime spells you care about can be cast as rituals anyway.  It's much like how a wizard is going to end up a lot closer to a sorcerer both power-wise and spell-selection-wise in a 3e core-only environment where the DM bans polymorphing, teleportation, and permanent minions and there's basically no downtime between adventuring days: if there's very little actual benefit to being able to swap out your spell loadout from day to day, then obviously picking that benefit over in-combat flexibility is a sucker's bet.


As a side note, 5e pseudo-Vancian is much like the 3e spirit shaman's spellcasting mechanic, and one would think that a class that's "druid, but with more flexible spellcasting" would be obviously better than the druid, yet we know that the druid ends up being far better because while its casting method is indeed better the advantage of Wild Shape and an animal companion over a grab-bag of spirit-related class features outweighs it in practice.  Likewise, while spontaneous casting is basically "all the good spells the wizard wants to prepare anyway, but with more flexibility" in a bunch of circumstances, you need to take the full context into account when determining which one is better on the whole.

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Other RPGs / Re: Review of Mistborn Adventure Game
« on: July 06, 2020, 11:00:12 PM »
Book 2: The Treatise Metallurgic
[...]
All in all this book is so much better than the previous one. Everything is well written and concise, things make sense, examples aren't long and rambling.  I feel like it had a different editor.  My prediction didn't come true though, that's a plus.
Quote from: Nanshork
If those people actively like storytelling games and don't mind super overexplained rules they might like the system.  Brandon Sanderson is one of the writers of the book so it has his official vote of approval (and he has sidebars all over the place explaining game design decisions so you know he had a hand in the design).

The reason it seems like the Treatise Metallurgic has a different voice than the rest of the book is that Sanderson actually wasn't all that involved in the overall design.  According to some interviews and materials on the Cosmere forums, his writing credit is entirely for the opening novella, the Treatise Metallurgic, and the "From Brandon" sidebars; he was busy writing Way of Kings and finishing Wheel of Time while Mistborn Adventures was in development and didn't have any time to work on a game on the side.  He only did the Treatise himself because that section involved a lot of material that hadn't yet made it into the Mistborn novels and he didn't want to hand his notes over to a third party.  Aside from that, his only input on the rest was a few high-level design goals, the "When the game developers and I were initially chatting about a Mistborn RPG..." bit mentioned in the first sidebar.

Having said that, you're not wrong about the game being incredibly underwhelming.  All of the Mistborn-and-RPGs fans I know only got it for the lore dumps (to borrow for other RPGs and as previews for upcoming books), and I barely managed to get through a single one-shot using the system before deciding that I'd write up a Fate hack for any Mistborn gaming I wanted to do in the future.

18
Now I'm wondering how a tabletop rules system would look if optimizers made it.

Like this, I imagine.

19
D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: 3.5 making a Lick King
« on: February 22, 2020, 08:16:52 PM »
What page on Arms & Equipment Guide? I've looked and cant seem to find it unless I am looking at the wrong book.

Page 128, the "Magic Items that Grant Feats" sidebar.

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Use-activated or continuous--- Spell level x caster level x 2000 then divide it in half if the spell is 24 hour duration or greater.

Would that sound about right for making a cloak, hell couldn't find a price for a normal cloak but for a good one I am guessing 1 gold would do it but still that doesn't seem to make the price any higher. If what I put down is right then for one of the metamagic feats it would only cost 1k?

Nope, a feat is not a spell, you can't just say that a feat is basically a CL 1 spell with a 24 hour duration and price things based on that.

As noted, as per the A&EG sidebar your cloak would cost at minimum 45,000 gp: 20,000gp for Energy Substitution (Cold) [10K base, 2×5K for two prerequisites] + 25,000gp for Energy Substitution (Cold) [10K base, 3×5K for three prerequisites]...or possibly 35,000 gp if your DM is willing to knock off one 5K given that Energy Substitution (Cold) is one of the LotU prereqs and another 5K given that Energy Sub automatically lets you fulfill the "can cast a [Cold] spell" prereq.  And that's assuming that he doesn't rule that any of those prereqs are the 10K variety instead of the 5K variety, or add a markup for combining two effects and/or putting them in the cloak slot.

And that's still a pretty great deal, considering that a greater rod of cold substitution is 24,300 gp, so if one assumes that the cost is identical for all metamagic feats with a given level adjustment then that plus a greater rod of the uttercold would be 48,600 gp for just 3 daily uses.

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To make it more simple, lets say I have a cloak of charisma +2 which is 4,000 in starting price and I want to add more stuff to it to make it like the two feats I was talking about. If I did the math right from above would it basely only add 4,000 more to the cost or is there more I need to add?

As per MIC rules for combining items, yes, you can add on the Cha +2 to any other cloak without any other markup because it counts as a "common effect" (see page 234).  For any other effects, there's a markup, usually 50%, for combining two dissimilar effects in one item, more if you're moving around body slots.

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I am more so looking for it to have it at all times, no charges so would it work out the same or what would I have to add to make it unlimited duration?

That formula is for a continuous effect already.

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D&D 3.5 and Pathfinder / Re: 3.5 making a Lick King
« on: February 22, 2020, 01:17:12 AM »
However I was thinking of putting those feats in cloak  but my question for that is how much would it be to do that? I tried looking it up but I still not sure how to do it, more so because each of these metamagics have 0 cost
[...]
For items, again I like to know the price for making a cloak with Energy Substitution and Uttercold and would add it to my character list unless it's way too much.

There are two "official" ways to do that.  You can go the Metamagic Rod route by figuring out the price for a greater metamagic rod of cold substitution and  greater metamagic rod of uttercold, adding the markup for combining items and using an unusual slot, and add that onto whatever other powers the item has; the pro for that is that it's pretty solid rules-wise, the con is that that's pretty expensive and only 3/day each.

The other option is to use the Arms & Equipment Guide rules on making items that grant feats, which says they should "cost 10,000 gp, plus another 5,000 gp to 10,000 gp per prerequisite."  (There's a previous paragraph in that sidebar regarding metamagic feats, but since it mentions increasing price due to increased spell levels, that seems like it's intended to apply to building metamagic into other item effects).  The pro for that approach is that you effectively have the feat and can apply it to all your spells, the con is that it's heavily dependent on DM judgment.  Personally, for a thematic and not-ridiculously-powerful combo like that I wouldn't think twice before approving it, but your DM might have other ideas.

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Full plate, if I can like to some how add Expeditious Retreat to give me more speed (again would need price for items like that.).

The DMG has standard price formulas for that.  Constant effects are [CL] × [spell level] × 2,000 gp, times 2 for the original spell having a minutes/level duration.

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I have thought of Corpsecrafter or just stack up on extra turnings, other then that not sure what other feats would work well with this build.
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At this point I would like to hear some suggestions and thoughts about my build that I could emprove or even change to make it deadlier as well for the  prices on the stuff I asked for the custom magical items

For dedicated necromancers in general, and a Lich King type in particular, there are three major routes you can take:

1) Be an undead master, focus on quality, raise a handful of heavily-enhanced minions (preferably from exotic monsters with great stats and/or handy abilities), and micromanage them for best effect.

2) Be an undead master, focus on quantity, raise a ton of weak minions (preferably from common humanoid monsters so a fireball or two will give you plenty of corpses to work with), and throw them in the general direction of your enemies.

3) Reanimate things sparingly, keep a handful of undead around of varying quality, but focus on the cursing/life draining/soul manipulation/etc. aspect of necromancy primarily.

If you're going with door #1, you'll probably want to take Corpsecrafter and maybe one or two others in that tree, but your undead are going to start out pretty badass already so your feats and items are better spent on whatever else you're going to be doing in conjunction with your minions.  For door #2, you'll probably want to take as many Corpsecrafter-related feats as possible, because applying a moderate buff to a few hundred normally-weak undead mooks makes for a huge boost in quality.  For door #3, even Corpsecrafter is probably going to be a waste.

You can, of course, try to split the difference and have a few powerful and exotic undead "generals," a mob of weaker undead, and plenty of self-buffs and debuffs, but while that strategy works well for a BBEG (who's probably going to have several levels on a party of PCs, undead generals acquired by plot and fiat, plenty of time and gold to burn on animation and crafting, etc.), as a PC you should really pick one route and focus on it.

The one way I could potentially see the split-the-difference route working out is to lean heavily on your artifact.  If your character has a "Dread Crown of the Lich King" item made of gnarled black ice that grants you Energy Sub (Cold) + Lord of the Uttercold, the entire Corpsecrafter line, and free or discounted animate dead a few times a day, that makes you halfway decent at routes #3, #1, and #2, respectively, so spreading your resources around at that point would actually be the most effective route.  But again, that depends entirely on your DM, so check with him on that first.

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